Post a Comment        E-mail To A Friend        Join The List

You Can Pronounce Them Danceable: A Conversation with !!!

by Alexander Dimitropoulos
10/04/2007

Disco-punkers !!!, whose name is pronounced as any monosyllabic sound repeated three times, most commonly, “chk chk chk,” played festivals and concerts this year throughout the world, from Chicago’s Lollapalooza to Athens, Greece’s Synch Festival. Eight or nine years ago, however, they were told they were not prepared to play in a smaller venue here in Athens, Ga.

“It’s actually kind of a private joke within the band because I remember when Mario [Andreoni] was trying to book the show, the lady booking there said, ‘I don’t think you’re ready for Tasty World,’” lead singer Nic Offer said with a laugh during our phone interview. “We still make that joke every once in a while... She was right; we weren’t ready for Tasty World. Nobody was there to see us!”

!!! will come to Athens’s 40 Watt Oct. 6 with Tyler Pope and Mario Andreoni on guitar, Daniel Gorman on keyboard and trumpet, Alan Wilson on saxophone and percussion, Justin Van Der Volgen on bass, Gerard Fuchs on drums, and Nic Offer and Shannon Funchess on vocals. Funchess, who sings on “Heart of Hearts” on the band’s newest album, Myth Takes, is filling in the pieces previously performed in concert by John Pugh, who is not joining !!! on the tour.

Several of the members have had to juggle working with other prominent bands, though !!! seems to be a main priority. Pope, for example, also played with LCD Soundsystem.

“When LCD’s record was coming out just a few weeks after ours, it was like, there was just no way with all the scheduling that he was going to be able to do both,” Offer said. “So, he went with us.”

Fuchs, the drummer in !!!, currently works with three other bands: New York’s The Juan Maclean, Brooklyn’s Turing Machine and Athens’ own Maserati. He said he started playing live with !!! in the beginning of 2006 but had been recording with them as early as two-and-a-half years ago.

“I’m not even really an official member of !!!,” Fuchs said. “It’s sort of like, I will record with them and I’ll tour with them, but all of the writing is pretty much done without me. I feel like I have a more important stake in Maserati, although one, you know, I actually make a little bit of money on, and the other, you know, I don’t. I might make enough money to buy some food.

“They both kind of take precedence over each other depending on what comes first and the importance of what it is that needs to be scheduled, whether it’s recording or touring. I mean, I’m in four bands at the moment, and I hold all four of them quite, quite close.”

At one point, two of those four bands were performing together.

“Maserati was supporting !!! for a about a week’s worth of shows, sometime, that was back in June, so I had double-duty each night,” Fuchs said. “Which is kind of fun. I mean, maybe a little stupid, my body didn’t really like me afterwards.”

Mythmaking

The group’s third full-length album, Myth Takes, was released March 6, 2007 on Warp. If you’re unfamiliar with the band and have any doubt about whether it will hit you with a shot of adrenaline, look no further than “Yadnus.” The beginning of the song sounds like the introduction to Gary Glitter’s now-ubiquitous sports stadium staple: “Rock and Roll Part 2.”

“Interesting you should say that because we were kind of picking it up from a techno movement out of Cologne called ‘schaffel,’” Offer said. “But yeah, once we played the drums, then it kind of turned back into a Gary Glitter thing. And we actually even sampled the Gary Glitter handclaps and put it on to see how it worked, but it didn’t sound good.”

The rest of Myth Takes resurrects some things from the previous album, Louden Up Now (disco bass lines, intricate polyrhythm and loosely political themes) but changes its approach lyrically. Now, Offer focuses more on storytelling. “Must Be the Moon,” for example, follows the speaker from the dance floor to a store for cigarettes, then a taxi and then finally the house.

It culminates with a funny, fumbling line, one which is characteristic of the rest of the band’s oeuvre. The lyrics in the album booklet read, “We did it on the bed and we did it on the floor, but I was surprised when I got the cold shoulder (the next morning). She said, “U just got me hot, I finished off while you were snoring.”

Pitchfork Media’s review of the band’s previous album, Louden Up Now, called Offer’s lyrics “generally asinine,” however. While he said he doesn’t pay too much attention to reviews, Offer found that Pitchfork was not alone in its criticism of the album.

“It seemed to me a kind of consensus,” Offer said. “I couldn’t miss that everyone was unhappy with the lyrics on the last record, so I just went inward and worked harder on them. You know, the things that I was disappointed in lyrically on the last record aren’t the things that got attacked. There are a lot of things that I still think are really funny or really good on Louden Up [Now].”

Recording the New Album

Most of !!! lives in New York, one member lives in Portland and another lives in Sacramento. To record Myth Takes, the band traveled to Nashville, Tenn. and rented a house.

“I mean, it was really kind of just like being anywhere,” Offer said. “It wasn’t like we soaked in the Music City Vibe or something. You know, I mean, we really just holed up in a house and just went for it. So it was more like we were together with each other, it wasn’t like we were really interacting with the town.”

Bassist Van Der Volgen produced the record.

“I think he’s really great,” Offer said. “We wanted someone who we felt like was [at the] top of their game and stuff. I feel like a lot of times when people go with a producer they always try to get somebody who made somebody else a really great record, like, 10 years ago or something. Like, some big name or something. We wanted somebody who was hot right now.”

Offer said the music and lyrics complement and influence each other.

“The music kind of tells you what it’ll almost be about, you know,” he said. “It’s almost like the colors of the sound, they just always come out dark.”

At the same time, Offer said the songs change throughout the tour.

“Yeah, they definitely grow,” he said. “They grow and change. When you’re playing them every night, they kind of grow ‘teeth,’ as we say.”

The Tour

After their performance in Athens, !!! are scheduled to go to Quebec, Reykjavik, Barcelona, Paris and London, among other places, according to the band’s Myspace page.

Offer explained how he judges whether a concert is a success.

“It’s kind of difficult,” he said. “I mean, I always just know, for me personally. But, you know, oftentimes we’ll walk backstage, and two people hate it and the rest of us liked it, or vice versa. But there are always shows where the roof does kind of lift off, and the crowd’s just going nuts and everything’s kind of transcendent.”

He said the concerts differ more in two main countries than anywhere else.

“Well Spain just goes more fucking nuts than anyone else,” Offer said. “And Japan goes totally nuts but in a different way. They go nuts and they’re paying total, complete attention to you.”

Back to Athens

Fuchs moved to Athens for two years after high school, then moved to New York for four or five years. He then moved back to Athens to finish school and finally returned to New York.
He said that he has probably been playing with !!! for longer than he has with Maserati, and he has performed at the 40 Watt, the Caledonia Lounge and Tasty World before. He has not played in Athens with !!! before.

“I love visiting Athens, however I always hated living there,” he said. “It was just incredibly difficult for me. But visiting is really not a problem. Believe it nor not, I enjoy myself and I probably have more friends now that I don’t live there than when I did, which seems kind of odd. And a lot of it depends on what kind of rehearsal schedule Maserati’s on.”

Friends of Fuchs, fans of the band and curious readers can buy tickets for the Oct. 6 performance at the 40 Watt with The Field at Schoolkids Records.

Name
Email
URL
Body
Are you human?